


Detention

by RoseAngel



Series: The Red Thread [24]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - School, First Meetings, Gen, Kid Fic, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 11:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13717053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseAngel/pseuds/RoseAngel
Summary: An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break. - Ancient Chinese beliefA series of alternate ways that John and Sherlock could have met. PROMPT FICPrompt #24: one where they are still children? Below 15?; and how about if they met as school kids on detention?





	Detention

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to my beautiful beta, Becca (LlamaWithAPen). Side note: Please go read her fic, Deducing Daisies. 
> 
> Today uses two separate prompts, the first from FanFiction.Net user jocelyn.o.ting and the second from FanFiction.Net user Morskijez.

The detention slip that John's teacher hands to John one Tuesday after lunch is the most terrifying thing that John has ever seen in his life.

John is not easily scared. In fact, John is brave. He has even watched scary movies on television at night, even though the warnings say that he is too young. However, being handed a detention slip is enough to make John's blood run cold in his veins. John has never received a detention before.

The scariest part about the note is not the fact that it is a detention slip, per se. The scariest part isn't even the explanation of why John has been given detention. The scariest part is the tick box down the bottom. "Parents/carers contacted", it says. The box next to 'Yes' has been ticked. There's only one thing that could mean: John's father has been called and informed that John has been sent to detention.

John would rather endure a whole week's worth of detentions – would rather lose all of his afternoon free time – than come home to see his father tonight, after his father has received word that John punched a boy and got detention for it. John's father will be angry. In fact, he will be furious.

John doesn't deserve this. He's a goody-two-shoes. He sits quietly in class, he listens to his teachers, and he does his work. He isn't loud or disruptive, like some of the other boys who sit at the back. He doesn't draw rude pictures in the margins of his notebooks, or say mean things to the other kids, or chew gum and stick it under his desk. John is well-behaved. He does not deserve a detention.

Yes, John did punch a boy in the face. He won't deny that. He can't deny it, given that people saw it happen. However, he had good reason. He wouldn't have done it if there had been another option. The boy who John had punched had been pulling on Molly's pigtails, and it was making her cry. He wasn't listening to her when she asked him to stop, and he did not listen to John when John told him to stop. Punching him was the only remaining option. It was the only way he could make the boy stop and leave Molly alone. The boy deserved it.

It was just one punch; that was all. Yet, John is strong, and the punch was enough to leave the boy with a bloody nose. It caused him to run to the teachers, and of course, the teachers did not see things from John's point of view. Giving someone a bloody nose, as far as the teachers were concerned, was far worse than pulling on someone's pigtails. So, John is the one who got a detention slip telling him to go to room 221B after class, and Molly's bully is the one who got told that pulling on a girl's pigtails is not very nice, and then got sent home with an ice pack pressed to his swollen face.

It's not fair.

When the bell rings that afternoon to signal the end of the day, John's classmates gather up their belongings with excitement, ready to go home and play video games or play sports or just enjoy not having to sit in a classroom for a few hours. John, however, gathers up his belongings with a sense of dread pooling into the pit of his stomach. It's dread more so about what happens when he leaves detention this afternoon than the hour that he has to spend in detention itself, but nothing about the detention hour is particularly desirable to him either.

He walks down the hall until he reaches room 221B, and he peers in through the small window on the door. Some of the other kids who have also been given detention that day are already there. They are not like him. They are not the kind of kids who sit at the front of the class and raise their hands to answer questions like John does. Some of the kids in the detention room lean back on their chairs so that only two legs are on the floor, even though they might fall and break their necks. Some throw things at the ceiling fan – pencils, paper balls, paper aeroplanes. Even standing outside the door, John can tell that the room is loud. Surely detention should be quieter. Shouldn't the teacher be telling them to be quiet?

John pushes open the door to step inside, and immediately, he realises why the teacher is not telling them to be quiet. The teacher is not there. There is no sign of any teacher or any other adult anywhere – not at the front of the room, nor weaving through the desks. There is no one around anywhere to tell the children to stop being disruptive.

This does not make sense to John. He's no expert, but he is pretty sure there is supposed to be a teacher in a detention classroom. Otherwise, what would be the point of detention, if it meant it was nothing more than an hour where students could sit in a classroom and throw things and do as they please? It does not seem to be a particularly good punishment.

"You might as well take a seat," drawls a voice. When John looks towards the source, he sees a boy about his age, with pale skin and dark, curly hair. Like many of the other kids, his feet are propped up on his desk, and his chair is tilted back. He is, however, slightly more well-behaved than the other kids, because he is not throwing anything. The boy continues, "Mr Thomas is always late."

John hesitates, but then a paper aeroplane narrowly misses his head, and he quickly sinks into the empty chair beside the curly-haired boy before he can lose an eye. He slides down low so that he is not an easy target for any of the projectiles. "If Mr Thomas is late," he asks, "why haven't people just left?"

The curly-haired boy looks at John out of the corner of his eye. "Because everyone knows he will turn up eventually. He always does. He'll see who isn't here, and they'll have to come back for detention another day. If you're interested in sneaking out, I suggest you wait until he arrives and takes your detention slip first – then you'll be more likely to get away with it."

"I wasn't going to sneak out," John says, surprised that the boy would even suggest it.

"Really?" the curly-haired boy asks, turning his head to John to look him over briefly. "I would, if it were my first time here – no reputation to make people suspicious of you. In fact, the only reason I'm not planning to escape today is because I escaped successfully a few weeks ago, and I don't want to push my luck and give away my methods."

"How did you escape last time?"

The boy gestures towards the door. "I had a network of sorts – a group of kids who caused commotion outside. They distracted Mr Thomas, and I sneaked out the window while he wasn't looking. It was easy, really, but I can't risk doing it again so soon – Mr Thomas might realise that there is a pattern, and might connect the commotion outside with me. I'd rather save it for a time when I really do need to escape."

"How many times have you been here?" John asks, because the way the curly-haired boy talks makes it seem like not only is this not his first time here, but also that he expects it won't be his last.

The curly-haired boy shrugs his shoulders. "Only a dozen or so," he says.

"A dozen?"

"Twelve."

John rolls his eyes. "I know what a dozen is, I'm not stupid. I mean, you've really been here a dozen times?"

The curly-haired boy looks to John again, gaze flickering up and down John's seated form. "Well, we can't all be goody-two-shoes who would only ever get sent to detention for a very good reason."

John frowns. He thinks for a moment that the curly-haired boy has read his detention slip and has leapt to the conclusion that punching the boy was a 'very good reason', but when John looks down, he sees that his slip is face-down on the table. The boy couldn't have read it. He looks back up again. "How did you know that?" he asks.

"Hm?"

"How did you know that I'm only here for a good reason?"

The boy cocks an eyebrow, looking more amused than anything else. "Well, it's obvious, isn't it?" he says, but John shakes his head, because it isn't obvious to him. The boy continues, "Your knuckles are bruised. Not a lot, which means it wasn't a major fight, but you definitely punched someone. You've never been to detention before - I've never seen you here before, and aside from that, you stick out like a sore thumb. You clearly don't belong. That means you don't usually punch people. I'd say it's safe to guess you had a good reason for doing so today. In other words, it was the right thing to do." A pause, and then he finishes, "That, and I heard Molly Hooper talking today about how she was being bullied, but one of the boys in her class saved her and then got detention for it. It's not difficult to work out that that boy in her class is you."

It sounds obvious when the curly-haired boy finishes explaining it, but John knows that he could have never worked anything like out on his own. It's like the boy beside him has psychic powers and read his mind. A part of John thinks that maybe he did. "Wow," John says at last. "That's amazing." After a beat, he asks, "Is Molly okay?"

"I assume so," says the curly-haired boy, and then he looks down pointedly at John's hands. "I think her bully ended up in a worse-off state than she did."

John glances down at his knuckles and finds that he does not feel guilty at all.

He looks back at the curly-haired boy after a moment, and he looks over him in the hopes that he might be able to do what the boy just did, to magically work out why this boy is here. He very quickly realises that he hasn't got the faintest idea what kind of thing he should even be looking for, and he gives up after little time. "Why are you here, then?" he asks.

The curly-haired boy leans back in his chair again. "I started a small fire in my science classroom," he says.

John blinks. "On purpose?"

The curly-haired boy gives him an exasperated look. "Of course not."

"Then why are you in trouble? If it was an accident, shouldn't they understand?"

The curly-haired boy's lips pull upwards into a smirk. "Well," he says, "the experiment that caused it was not one that I was supposed to be doing."

"Why were you doing an experiment?"

The boy shrugs. "I was bored. It would have been fine if I hadn't made a minor mistake – it won't happen again." He pauses for a moment, looking around the classroom, and then he says, "I'm not sure why they keep bothering sending me to detention, really. Surely they know it's not going to stop me from doing my own experiments in class. It hasn't worked the last five times."

"Have the last five times all been because you started a fire?" John asks.

"Not necessarily," the boy says with a shake of his head. "But they've all been because of something to do with science. My science teacher is the only one who has ever bothered to give me detention. She doesn't like me."

"Why?"

"Probably because I start fires in her classroom."

John laughs at the response, but before he has the chance to say anything else, the door to the classroom opens. The room falls silent immediately. Kids rush back to their chairs; paper planes flutter to the floor without anyone to catch them. It's striking how quickly the room goes from loud and bustling with energy to quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

The teacher – Mr Thomas, according to the curly-haired boy; not a teacher that John recognises – shuts the door behind him. John sees his eyes scan the room, as though he is checking who is there and who is not. John does not know how the boy beside him could have escaped last time like he said. Surely even if there had been a distraction, the teacher would have noticed when he looked back to the classroom that there was one empty desk that hadn't been there before.

"Detention slip," Mr Thomas says, his voice cold, holding his hand out to John. John hurriedly picks up the note from his desk to hand it over. He feels nervous and uncomfortable as he does so. John has never been in trouble before. Teachers are usually happier when they talk to John. Usually, they smile at him. Mr Thomas, on the other hand, doesn't even meet John's eyes. He takes the detention slip, and then nods once and puts it into his folder.

"Thank you, John," he says, but his tone of voice does not sound like he is actually thanking John at all. He steps over to the next desk, where the curly-haired boy is sitting, and when the boy hands over the detention slip, Mr Thomas reads it and then looks up. "Another fire, Sherlock?" he asks.

"The last one wasn't a fire," the boy says. "It was an explosion."

The teacher lets out a hum, and then he keeps walking, moving over to the next desk to collect the next detention slip. While he does, John leans over to whisper, "You caused an explosion? Like, you blew something up?"

"It was controlled," the curly-haired boy – Sherlock – whispers back. "I knew what I was doing. My teacher didn't see it that way."

"Why?"

"Because she's stupid."

John shakes his head. "No, I mean, why did you cause an explosion?"

Sherlock frowns, as though the question has never before crossed his mind. "Why not?" he says at last. "I wanted to know what would happen, and I was bored."

"So you—" John starts, but the teacher cuts him off before he can finish his sentence.

"Quiet, Mr Watson," Mr Thomas says sharply, and John jerks away from Sherlock as though he has been burned. He is not used to being told off, not in school. He's not used to teachers shouting at him, or talking to him in harsh tones. It makes him feel guilty. He drops his gaze to the floor.

The teacher collects the last of the detention slips and moves to the front of the class, placing the folder down on his desk before taking a seat. "Get to work, then," he instructs, and the students in the classroom do just that. They reach into their bags, pulling out notebooks and homework and other things to keep themselves occupied while they're stuck here. Everything is much more subdued than it was when John first entered the classroom. No one is throwing things or shouting anymore. John wonders if they're all scared of getting into trouble, if that's why they all behave now that the teacher is here.

John pulls out his notebook, and flips through the pages until he can find something to work on. The issue is that John pays attention in class, more so than the other students. A lot of the time, the homework he and his classmates are given is just whatever they did not finish in class. It means that John often has little to no homework, because he has finished most, if not all, of his work in class. Usually this is a good thing, because it means he can go home and do whatever he wants, but today, it is most definitely not a good thing, because if he doesn't have homework to do then he won't look like he's working, and then he might get into trouble. He doesn't want the teacher to think that he is slacking off. He doesn't want to be yelled at.

He eventually settles on one of his maths worksheets. He takes his time going through each of the questions and checking his answers. He could normally finish something like this very quickly, but today, he would rather slow himself down and make it seem like he is busy for longer.

After a moment or two, the boy next to him leans over to place a folded piece of paper on his desk. John glances at him with a frown, and then looks up at the teacher in front. He doesn't want to get caught passing notes. The teacher is not looking, however – Mr Thomas seems preoccupied with whatever piece of paper is sitting on his desk – so John decides to risk it. He takes the piece of paper and carefully unfolds it underneath his desk.

It reads:  _You're not used to this, are you?_

John assumes that 'this' refers to getting into trouble, or getting sent to detention. He glances at Sherlock out of the corner of his eye, and then writes out his response, his handwriting a scrawl beneath Sherlock's.

His response reads:  _I don't want to get into more trouble._

He passes the note back to Sherlock, who reads it and writes his own response in return. It reads:  _Goody-two-shoes. You won't get into any more trouble. You're the only one doing work._

John reads the note, and then looks around to find that Sherlock is right. Although the students at the surrounding desks did get their notebooks out when the teacher instructed them to, none of them are actually doing any work. Some are doodling in the corners of their margins; others are staring absently into space. One girl has her eyes downcast, and after a moment, John realises that that is because she has a mobile phone hiding underneath her desk. John doesn't even own a mobile phone.

John looks back at the note, and then he writes out his response, and for several minutes, they continue a conversation like this, writing and passing a folded slip of paper back and forth between them.

John writes:  _Won't Mr Thomas notice everyone's not working and tell them off?_

Sherlock writes:  _You're in detention. The people here don't really care about being yelled at._

John writes:  _But won't Mr Thomas just send them to detention again later?_

Sherlock writes:  _Unlikely. Mr Thomas hates being here as much as we do. Ignores us just so he can send us home and not need to bring us back._

John writes:  _What's the point of detention then?_

Sherlock writes:  _There is none. Look around. No one here will stop doing what they do just because they spent an hour in detention._

John writes:  _None of you are even a little scared of getting into trouble?_

Sherlock writes:  _Of course not. Why are you?_

John does not respond to this one immediately. He fiddles with his pen instead, trying to think of a response. Sherlock, however, seems to know what he is thinking, even though John has no idea how he could have worked it out.

Sherlock takes the note back before John can write anything on it, and he adds an extra line:  _It's not Mr Thomas you're scared of. It's your family._

The words on the page almost make John flinch. He knows there's no point in denying it. He thinks carefully for a moment, and then writes:  _My dad won't be happy._

Sherlock writes:  _You had a good reason._

John writes:  _He won't care. He won't listen to my side of the story._

Sherlock writes:  _You're scared of going home._

John hesitates for a moment, and then writes:  _It's fine. He'll just yell a bit._

Sherlock writes:  _It doesn't seem fine._

John doesn't know what to say in response. He doesn't want to say anything in response. Instead, he just passes the note back to Sherlock without adding an extra sentence, and he turns his attention back to his worksheet. Sherlock does not try to stop him.

It's a good thing, really, that John opted to go back to doing his homework instead of continuing to pass notes to Sherlock. It's only a short while later when Mr Thomas looks up from his desk and he realises that one of the girls in the classroom has a mobile phone under her desk. He walks over to take it off her, and what this means is that, when he walks past John's desk, he can see John's notebook, full of all the work that John had done over the last forty minutes or so. If he had seen John passing notes, John probably would have gotten into trouble. Fortunately, John just looks like he's been working quietly all detention (which he has been, mostly).

"Mr Watson," the teacher says. John's head snaps up immediately. He finds himself instantly filled with dread, thinking that he's about to get into trouble, even though he has done nothing wrong. When John meets Mr Thomas' eye, Mr Thomas continues, "You can pack up your things and go." A beat, and then he adds, "Mr Holmes too, seeing as he's far less disruptive next to you."

John glances at Sherlock out of the corner of his eye. Since they stopped passing notes, Sherlock has been completely silent. John can see a textbook that's open on Sherlock's desk. It looks far more complicated than anything that John has ever seen.

He stands and gathers his belongings, while Sherlock does the same beside him, pushing their books into their bags and hauling their bags over their shoulders. "Thank you, sir," John says before he steps out of the door.

Sherlock follows after him. " _Thank you, sir_ ," he mimics when they're in the hallway. "Do you always speak like that, or is it just when you're worried about getting into trouble?"

"Shut up," John says, and then he glances at Sherlock out of the corner of his eye. "What did he mean, you're less disruptive next to me?"

Sherlock shrugs his shoulders dismissively. "Normally I don't sit still and silent for an entire hour," he says.

"Why did you do that today, then?"

"I was thinking."

"About?"

Sherlock is silent for a moment, not responding to the question. They walk side-by-side through the halls. After a moment, however, Sherlock takes a step in front of John, blocking his path, and forcing John to stop walking. Sherlock says, "Come back to my house."

"What?"

"You don't want to go home. Might as well give your dad some more time to calm down before you see him, right?"

John considers it. He's not sure how much of a difference it will make, but it might help at least a bit. Maybe it means that when John gets home he will actually be able to tell his side of the story, without just being yelled at.

"Will your parents mind?" he asks.

Sherlock shakes his head. "I doubt it. Mummy keeps saying I should invite friends over more. We have a guest room, so she won't mind if you stay the night."

"Like a sleepover?"

"Like a sleepover."

John thinks about it for a moment. He hasn't been to a sleepover in ages. He barely knows this boy – only met him today. But, he doesn't want to go home, and really, he finds Sherlock kind of interesting. Maybe, he thinks, a sleepover would be a good way to make friends.

"That would be nice, actually," John says, and Sherlock grins.


End file.
